Posted: August 22, 2022 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Housebuilding, Mortgages, Right to buy | Tags: Conservatives |
Originally published as a column for Inside Housing.
On the surface the two Tory leadership candidates have had little new to say about housing – when they’ve even bothered to discuss it.
Liz Truss would cut red tape for housebuilding at the same time as she would scrap the ‘Stalinist housing targets’ introduced by her own party and boost community rights to object to homes that create the red tape in the first place.
Sunak would put a stop to building on the green belt, highlighting the 60 square miles lost to development since 2014 while ignoring the 60,000 square miles that are left and the fact the green belt has doubled in size since 2014.
Those contradictory ideas reveal next to nothing beyond a need to appeal to well-housed Tory members but neither candidate has said anything so far about social housing, affordable housing or private renting.
Yet there are issues and ideas bubbling away beneath the surface of the leadership contest that could still have a profound impact on housing.
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Posted: August 1, 2022 | Author: julesbirch | Filed under: Home ownership, Private renting, Social housing |
Originally published as a column for Inside Housing.
Never mind the supply of new homes – should we be thinking more about the ownership and distribution of the ones we already have?
That’s the intriguing question at the heart of a new discussion paper from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) that challenges the orthodoxy that new supply is the key to fixing the housing system.
The problem is that, while supply has to be part of the solution, it takes time to have an effect and people who need affordable homes do not have time.
Even if we built 300,000 new homes a year in England (an even bigger if as Tory leadership candidates pander to their MPs and members) that would have to be sustained for years to have an impact on prices. Even if that included the 90,000 social rent homes a year advocated by campaigners, and even if no more were sold off, it would take more than a decade to house families on council waiting lists that significantly understate demand.
So why not look instead at the 25 million homes that already exist? As Darren Baxter-Clow, Joseph Elliott and Rachelle Earwalker argue in the paper, recent history shows that rapid changes are possible.
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Jules Birch 